Since 2022, I am a lecturer and researcher in the Division of Developmental Biology at the Friedrich – August University of Erlangen - Nuremberg. During my biology studies, a first field trip led me to the Amazonian rainforest in northeast Peru with the German Primate Centre where I studied heterospecific associations in tamarins (Saguinus spp.). In 2007, I received my diploma in biology at the University of Jena in collaboration with the University of St. Andrews working on differences in male Diana monkey (Cercopithecus diana) alarm calling between populations in Sierra Leone and Côte d'Ivoire. I then choose to switch phylogenetic clades and sensory modes and to investigate visual cognition in pigeons (Columba livia), which led to a doctoral degree in cognitive biology at the University of Vienna in 2013. I got hooked on primatology again in 2013 and started a postdoctoral position at the Department of Comparative Cognition at the University of Neuchâtel, now comparing different populations and different species of forest guenons in West Africa. After having spent several years in the Upper Guinean Rain Forest, I endeavoured to increase my contribution to applied conservation of natural habitats, which is why I opted to combine fundamental research with applied conservation and local capacity formation. A position as Principal Investigator with the Wildlife Conservation Society in the Nouabalé - Ndoki National Park of the Congo basin was the perfect fit to implement this vision. In the Republic of Congo, I extended my research in behavioural ecology and cognitive biology to forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) and to western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla).